Nitzia Nachmias, a senior researcher at the Jewish-Arab Center who also teaches in Asheklon College and the University of Maryland, has a new approach to the Palestinian “refugee” problem that is probably the correct one. In a recent interview she explained to Arutz Sheva:
“there’s no such thing as Palestinian refugees. If people would stop calling the places in which they live ‘refugee camps,’ then they would see that these places are just like villages and towns anywhere else, and the inhabitants are totally rehabilitated… Refugee camps are like the maabarot [in which Israel housed its hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from North Africa and elsewhere] in the 1950’s or the camps now in Haiti – not the villages with streets and stone houses in what is known as Palestinian refugee camps of today.”
She also noted that most of those Palestinians living abroad who claim to be refugees have been fully integrated into their host countries, meaning they are technically no longer refugees. There has been a lot of fuss lately about Palestinians in Lebanon who are barred from certain professions, making it seem as if this situation is widespread. Lebanon should be pressured to change that, but as Nachmias said: “Only in Lebanon are there refugees who are not allowed to work in certain professions; they are a small fraction of the total.”
Professor Nachmias also pointed out that the Palestinian “refugees” do not fit the definition under international law. That law defines a refugee as “an individual or family that was forced to run away – but this definition does not extend to children, a community or a group.” And certainly not to the descendants of these people in perpetuity.
Her recommendations are these. First:
“We can’t simply push it off to the ‘final status talks’ and say, ‘We don’t accept the demand for the right-of-return because it will destroy the Jewish character of our state;’ what do they care about our Jewish character? If they deserve to be here, then it’s tough luck on us! Rather, Israel should take a pro-active approach, basing itself on international law and precedents, and declare that the Palestinian refugee issue no longer exists. They are no longer refugees!”
And second:
“Israel must nullify the status of Palestinian refugee camps; there is no other place where the UN controls territory. We must send the UNRWA out and transfer the control of these places to the Palestinian Authority, and then when the status of each individual resident there is reviewed, we will see that none of them match the legal definition of a refugee, and they are established citizens.”
This is brilliant and it’s true. If her recommendations were followed, Israel might be able to solve the seemingly intractible problem of the “refugees” in a fully legal way. I don’t know how the countries where Palestinians live would be forced to give them citizenship, but that would be necessary. Such a solution would greatly benefit the Palestinians. Almost anything the UN runs messes up the lives of the people it controls, and UNRWA, the agency for these “refugees,” has been a force for great misery and evil. Where Palestinians have gained some autonomy and stopped depending on UNRWA for their existence they have built up an economy and thrived, as is the case in some of the West Bank towns.
I can’t find any reaction from the Israeli government or anyone else in the more than two weeks since this interview, but to my mind this is an important development.